Posted
by
samzenpus
on Wednesday December 15, 2010 @12:42PM
from the zero-tolerance-and-common-sense dept.

Officials at a middle school in Georgia were searching a girl's purse after being tipped off she was carrying a knife, but they didn't find a weapon. They found something just as bad, ibuprofen. Not the usual 200mg pills, but the big 800mg variety. An investigation revealed that the girl had received the pills from her mother, who got the medication from Martin Army Community Hospital. Police then charged the mother with distributing a dangerous drug, while her daughter was only charged with possession. There's no telling what deviant acts a 12-year-old might commit under the influence of four Advil.

I am pretty confident that a chunk of this going down is because they are 800mg pills. These are not advil we are talking about. These are prescription grade pills. The mother is in the wrong for giving those to her child. I do think the charges against the kid should be dropped though. Also, they do not explain why she has these pills with her. If they are already searching her for a knife, that means right then and there that there is something else going on that you are not being told and you are a

There's a risk that someone who's used to taking the regular type might end up accidentally taking a double or quadruple dose. But 1) that's unlikely to be fatal[1] and 2) is such a corner case that it's very unlikely to happen. A good telling off and a lecture about how it's the portion that makes the poison should have been enough in this case.

[1] I'm still here, having taken 400mg ones roughly every 4 hours when I had a dental abscess. And yes, i had read the instructions. It fucking hurt!

My point exactly is that possession of prescription only dose sizes is illegal without a prescription.

Why is that so hard to understand?

Now admittedly the whole store was a huge troll, failing to even mention that 800mg dose is prescription only, but by the time you get to this part of the thread you should realize that there was a violation of law here, not just some school policy.

It's IBUPROFEN. Zero abuse potential, zero buzz. It can give you a bellyache but I don't know anyone who considers that recreational. I know when I was 12, I was quite capable of following instructions for medication (prescription or otherwise).

Whatever bright light decided drug charges were needed for this should be horsewhipped and then denied any sort of analgesic. Now, go call your mom and ask her to tell you without looking at a bottle how many mg are in a regular Motrin. I had to look at a bottle in m

It's IBUPROFEN. Zero abuse potential, zero buzz. It can give you a bellyache but I don't know anyone who considers that recreational. I know when I was 12, I was quite capable of following instructions for medication (prescription or otherwise).

Whatever bright light decided drug charges were needed for this should be horsewhipped and then denied any sort of analgesic. Now, go call your mom and ask her to tell you without looking at a bottle how many mg are in a regular Motrin. I had to look at a bottle in my desk, I certainly don't memorize that sort of thing.

The mother should be warned that those are prescription strength. The mother's friend should get a warning about dispensing any prescription drug (even motrin) without a prescription. That should be the end of the matter.

I'm pretty sure this has nothing to do with the law and everything to do with the schools zero tolerance policy.

That being said, 800mg is a prescription level. And if the pills were 800mg, there is no way the kid could have taken less (unless she was instructed to bite them in half), so she would technically need a prescription to have tabs that big.

And equal dose in standard 200mg tabs would not require a prescription.

Note that you might be prescribed 800mg if you were on the wrong end of a knife fight, s

Actually, no. It's just one of the few things that would even make a twisted sort of sense out of the situation.

Other reasons to make the drugs prescription are cases where a normal dose could do a great deal of harm should the person be mis-diagnosed or just unlucky or in the case of antibiotics, widespread misuse could render them useless (ooops, looks like doctors didn't handle that much better!).

None of those apply. That just leaves overdose, but it's not much harder to OD on OTC ibuprofen.

If they are already searching her for a knife, that means right then and there that there is something else going on that you are not being told and you are also assuming this 12 year old is raised in a white picket fence community and "the big evil" is just out to get her. The drugs were also gotten from a community hospital, which again says lower income.

There is no way that her and her mom were oblivious to the fact since most standard, off the shelf ibuprofen pills are only 200mg. Something else was going on and I think you were too quick to assume the kid was innocent in this case

FYI - in this country, the UK, 400mg Ibuprofen are an off-the-shelf product.

The list of contraindications and possible side effects for prescription-strength ibuprofen is alarming. It is long and includes things to look for like "vomit that looks like coffee grounds". There are mood-altering substances with much shorter lists, like valium (diazepam).

Under the care of a physician, the maximum daily dose for an adult is 3.2 grams, and otherwise 1.2 grams. The maximum daily dosage for a 12-year-old is about 40 mg per kg of body mass.

There are a lot more serious drugs the kid could have been found to have, but there are laws about prescription medications. They are to be possessed and taken by the prescribed party and kept in a labelled container.

This should probably have resulted in a warning and in info packet being sent home, but schools have gone zero-tolerance crazy. The state does have a right to prosecute since this was technically illegal, but hopefully a good judge just sees that the lesson was learned.

There are mood-altering substances with much shorter lists, like valium (diazepam).

Are there mood-altering side effects to Ibuprofen? If not, then it is irrelevant what the list of side-effects of a mood-altering drug are compared to Ibuprofen. She wasn't taking Ibuprofen for the side-effects.

The maximum daily dosage for a 12-year-old is about 40 mg per kg of body mass.

It is alleged that the CDC tables show the average weight for a 12 year old girl is 94 pounds. That's 43kg. The maximum dose is therefo

You miss the point about comparing it to mood-altering drugs. I mentioned mood-altering drugs because the list of side effects and warnings for any psychoactive drug is usually long. Ibuprofen's is longer than many of those.

1700mg? That's not twice what she had. That's a little more than twice what one tablet contained. She had 11.5 tablets. You don't need to send your kid to school with 23 times the maximum daily dose for the kid to make it through the day.

What CRACKHEAD wrote THIS law??? Not only is this sheer idiocy, but borders on Nazi-like behavior. This is OVER THE COUNTER meds not “drugs”, per se at least not as far as any NORMAL definition of the goddamn word is. “Drugs”, as far as MOST legal definitions go, refer to things like marijuana, heroin, cocaine, etc. WHEN did ibuprofen become a “dangerous drug”?
Several years ago, when wisdom teeth were coming in and I had no dental insurance, I was taking 3000mg every 3

My uncle who has had a knee replacement and two artificial hips (among other issues) has taken ibuprofen for a long time.

He didn't always take it with food as instructed. Well this landed him in the hospital ~6-7 months ago for major stomach ulcers/bleeding. Doctors are 95%+ sure it was ibuprofen. He still takes the drug today, just on a full stomach.

800mg for a little girl is pretty steep, that is usually prescribed in the wake of chronic pain associated with a surgery/etc.

There's no telling what deviant acts a 12-year-old might commit under the influence of four Advil.